I’m sure you’ve been well versed on all the hype from the media, warning us young college kids to keep our social website pages clean because potential employers and professors can dig up a lot of dirt through them (Oh, you didn’t hear anything about that? Look here, here, and here, for starters).
Well I’ve discovered my English teacher’s Myspace page. Let the dirt digging begin!
The other day I was on campus, in between activities, and I watched groups of parents with their kids wandering around with lost looks in their eyes. They were holding the characteristic red orientation packets that scream, “I’m probably lost and confused right now!” Moms were holding maps upside down and backwards, pointing at buildings and screwing their eyes. Dads were standing in the middle of the roadways, blocking bicycle traffic. Girls were trying to fit into the college crowd, combing their hair with their fingers and looking around nervously. They were wearing nice clothes and designer flip flops. They failed miserably at fitting in.
See, at this point, with only 11 real class days left in the fall semester, we college kids are in survival mode. Last week I pulled two all-nighters. Seven page paper due tomorrow? No problem…just lemme run to Starbucks first. I’ve seen more bloodshot eyes in the past few days than I have ever seen in my life.
“Why is your shirt all wrinkly…and smelly?”
“I wore it yesterday, and I slept in it last night, and it was the first thing I saw this morning so….”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
I am in survival mode until the end of the semester. I can sleep at any time, in any situation. I will eat things that are total crap, just because I’m not sure when I’ll have time to eat next. My drink of choice is caffeinated tea. I feel like a character in a first-person shooter game whose mission is to survive under fire for 10 minutes; I know it’ll be over soon, I’ve just got to make it there.
With only four weeks left in the semester (OMG!), I have realized that I may not have learned a whole lot of things that are completely necessary to my future well-being (Von Thunen Model, anyone?), but I have learned one thing: English classes are the devil.
I’m not saying that because I’m bitter (even though I am a little bit). I’m saying that because, oh yeah, I’m going to be writing essays for a living after I graduate. Because people spend four years of their life learning to craft the perfect essay in order to find a deeper meaning in the first couple stanzas of Ginsberg’s Howl. No people, let’s be realistic here. The man was high, and in order to enjoy a poem of his you must be high, and in order for someone to even being to want to read literary criticism on a poem of his, that someone must be high. The point here is this: I read it and I like it, or I read it and I don’t like it, but I’m not all that compelled to read an essay that someone wrote about it.
Okay, instance number two. Picture me, giving a presentation about my company to a group of investors.
“And thus concludes why Company X can be related to the short story ‘The School’.”
“Are you on crack?”
See what I mean?
So, after next semester is over, I vow to never write another essay. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but know this: I’ll be damned if I take another English class.
